Blog Archives
Grace Notes
John Cheyenne Wilbur’s Grace Notes is a sprawling spiritual coming-of-age novel about Jerry Cradleman, a gifted, anxious young man whose search for home gradually becomes a search for God. Although it’s fiction, the author explains that the story is rooted in events from his own life, and that personal foundation gives the novel an unusually exposed, confessional quality. Jerry moves from an affluent but emotionally distant childhood in New Jersey through college, seminary, pastoral ministry, relationships, therapy, alternative spiritual communities, and, finally, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The story covers decades, but its central concern remains steady: Jerry wants to understand why he feels disconnected from himself and other people, and whether faith can offer him a place where he truly belongs.
The strongest element of the novel is Jerry’s complicated inner life. He can be funny, perceptive, needy, impulsive, self-absorbed, and deeply compassionate, sometimes within the same scene. Wilbur doesn’t turn his spiritual development into a smooth progression. Jerry repeatedly confuses love with rescue, certainty with faith, and intense emotion with revelation. His desire for belonging first attaches itself to sports, surrogate parents, romance, professional achievement, and religious authority. After finding warmth in the chaotic home of the youth minister Rog and his wife, Barbara, he writes, “This is my home” and “This is my church.” Those simple lines capture the novel’s emotional core. For Jerry, theology begins as a bodily sensation of being welcomed.
Wilbur tells the story through brisk scenes, energetic dialogue, dreams, sermons, letters, therapy sessions, and moments of music. That variety keeps a long narrative moving and allows serious subjects to sit beside awkward comedy. Jerry’s voice often has the nervous momentum of someone trying to interpret an experience while he’s still caught inside it. Music is especially important, from Mozart and Rachmaninoff to improvised piano sessions. The title’s grace notes become a useful metaphor for the unexpected people and experiences that alter the direction of Jerry’s life. These moments may appear secondary, but they often carry the deepest meaning. The novel’s physical descriptions of anxiety are also convincing. Dread reaches Jerry through his chest, stomach, breath, sweat, and sleeplessness before he has language for its source.
The book grows darker as Jerry’s religious vocation collides with depression, sexual shame, family trauma, and memories of possible childhood abuse. Wilbur approaches these sections through the uncertainty of Jerry’s own perception, including dreams, body memories, therapy, hypnosis, and spiritual practices. That uncertainty makes the reading experience intimate and occasionally unsettling. The later chapters bring together Christianity, Jungian psychology, meditation, vision quests, synchronicity, and New Age spirituality. Jerry’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem gives those threads a dramatic setting, but the journey’s real destination is an altered relationship with his own wounded childhood. When he returns to ministry and prays, “Lord, we are Your lost sheep. Help us find our way home,” the words feel earned because he’s finally including himself among the lost rather than pretending to lead from a place of certainty.
Grace Notes is an earnest, emotionally generous novel about faith as a lived struggle rather than an intellectual conclusion. Its scope is large, and Jerry’s repeated crises create a deliberately restless rhythm, reflecting a man who keeps moving because standing still would require him to feel everything he’s avoided. The ending, which reconnects him with April and an unexpected responsibility, brings the idea of home into practical life. Home becomes something he may have to build through presence, care, and commitment, not simply a mystical place he can discover. That makes the novel’s final movement satisfying. Jerry doesn’t finish with every question answered, but he has learned to remain beside another person and say, “I’m here.”
Pages: 372 | ASIN : B0H7XPQ5GG
Lilli’s Question
Lilli’s Question follows Jim McGann, a young American seminarian whose brief, luminous encounter with a German woman named Lilli leaves him with a question he spends his life trying to answer: why be a priest? What begins as an intimate memory from a bus trip through Europe widens into a decades-long reckoning with vocation, grief, love, Catholic hierarchy, and moral courage. Jim becomes a priest, suffers the shattering loss of his brother Tommy in Vietnam, wrestles with celibacy and desire, rises through the Church, and finally finds his answer by using his authority to challenge the exclusion of women from the priesthood.
I was struck by how patiently this novel lets a life accumulate. The book is not hurried toward revelation; it gathers weather, meals, old friendships, liturgies, landscapes, jokes, silences, and losses until Jim’s final act feels less like a plot twist than the slow ignition of everything he has lived. O’Neill writes especially well about the Catholic imagination, not as a set of abstractions but as a tactile world of incense, vestments, parish kitchens, funeral prayers, institutional politics, and private doubt. The scenes around Tommy’s death are devastating because they refuse easy sanctity. Jim’s grief is raw and unbeautified, and the book is strongest when faith and fury are allowed to occupy the same pew.
I appreciated the novel’s moral seriousness without pomposity. Jim can be reflective, even theological, but he is also funny, embarrassed, lonely, and frequently bewildered by the turns his own life takes. The women in the novel, especially Lilli, Jeannie, Sally, and Anna, are not merely stations on his spiritual journey; they are the voices that press him toward honesty. The novel’s discursiveness may test readers who prefer a tighter, more conventionally dramatic structure, but I found its spaciousness fitting. This is a book about conscience forming over time, and conscience is rarely efficient. It moves by detour, recurrence, ache, and sudden clarifying flame.
This is an ideal novel for readers of historical fiction, spiritual fiction, and character-driven coming-of-age stories that stretch across a lifetime. Readers who admire Graham Greene’s fascination with faith under pressure may find a gentler but no less searching companion here, one more interested in vocation as a lived tenderness than as a battlefield of damnation. Lilli’s Question is a thoughtful and tender novel about the cost of answering a question honestly.
Pages: 270 | ASIN : B0H3M7BQ1F
Temptation
Temptation, by Pablo Zaragoza, is a work of religious fiction with strong elements of psychological drama and suspense. The novel follows Father Alex Sanchez, a Jesuit priest, psychologist, and lawyer who is sent to a Pittsburgh seminary to evaluate clergy and seminarians for moral, psychological, and legal risks. What begins as an institutional assignment soon becomes something far more personal. Alex is forced to confront corruption inside the Church, the damage caused by secrecy, and his own growing love for Millie, a woman who makes him question whether his calling was ever truly his path.
Zaragoza doesn’t write around temptation. He puts it on the page in raw, uncomfortable terms, and that choice gives the novel its restless energy. Alex’s inner life is messy, repetitive, guilty, and often painfully human. At times, I felt like I was sitting across from someone who was confessing more than he meant to. The prose can be blunt, but that also fits the character’s struggle. This isn’t a polished saint looking back on weakness from a safe distance. This is a man in the middle of it, trying to pray while his body, memory, doubt, and anger all pull in different directions.
I also appreciated how the book widens its focus beyond one priest’s private battle. Zaragoza uses Alex’s assignment to ask hard questions about accountability, hypocrisy, mercy, and institutional self-protection. The novel is candid about the Church’s failures, but it’s not simply anti-religious. The story keeps returning to faith, not as a tidy answer, but as something people use to justify themselves, punish themselves, comfort themselves, and sometimes find courage. I was especially drawn to the tension between rules and love. Alex’s relationship with Millie could have been written as a simple scandal, but instead it becomes part of a larger question: what does a life of faith look like when it is stripped of fear?
Temptation will appeal most to readers who like morally charged stories about faith, guilt, desire, and institutional secrets. It’s not a subtle book. But readers who appreciate candid spiritual drama, flawed narrators, and stories that wrestle openly with the cost of vows will find plenty to think about here. I would recommend it to those who want a provocative, character-driven novel that treats temptation not as an abstract sin, but as a daily, bodily, emotional test of who a person really is.
Pages: 296 | ASIN : B0FV2YQM6N
A Soldier’s Burden
A Soldier’s Burden, by Natia Khaduri, translated by Mzia Kvirikasvili Lawrence, follows Colonel John Kartvelishvili, a Georgian peacekeeper in Afghanistan, whose military duty is entangled with prayer, moral exhaustion, and an unexpected bond with Sharon, a woman carrying her own history of violence, exile, faith, and maternal grief. What begins as a war-zone encounter becomes a story of restrained love, spiritual endurance, and the terrible cost of surviving when the heart has been repeatedly conscripted into pain.
I was most struck by how openly the novel lets its characters think and feel. John and Sharon don’t simply speak to each other; they argue with God, with memory, with the brutal arithmetic of war. The book has a devotional intensity that gives even ordinary gestures, a letter, a touch, a saved object, the weight of a sacrament. Sometimes the prose feels less like conventional realism and more like a long confession whispered beside a battlefield.
The emotional force of the book comes from its refusal to make love easy. Khaduri writes love as burden, refuge, debt, punishment, and grace, sometimes all in the same breath. The translation occasionally carries a raw, uneven cadence, but that roughness also gives the novel its unique feel; the sentences often feel bruised rather than polished, and that suits a story about people who have lived through more than language can neatly hold.
This book will speak most strongly to readers of military fiction, Christian fiction, war drama, romance, and women’s fiction. Readers who appreciate the spiritual suffering and moral questioning in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns may find a related ache here, though Khaduri’s novel is more prayerful and more openly philosophical. A Soldier’s Burden is a wounded love story with a soldier’s discipline and a mourner’s soul.
Pages: 282 | ASIN : B0CW1FWNH4
The Price of Redeeming Love: A Modern Retelling of Ruth
The Price of Redeeming Love is a work of Christian fiction and contemporary biblical retelling that reimagines the Book of Ruth in a modern setting, moving the story into drought-stricken California and a farming community in Sonora, where loss, migration, loyalty, and costly love shape the lives of Grace, Lucía, and Bo Porter. The book begins in collapse and keeps one eye on grief even when it turns toward romance, which I appreciated. It is not shy about its roots either. Mike Cleveland openly frames the novel as a faithful modern Ruth retelling, with Grace standing in for Naomi, Lucía for Ruth, and Bo for Boaz, and that clear framework gives the whole story a steady backbone.
I found the protagonist compelling because she feels shaped by pressure rather than built as a symbol first. Grace, especially in the opening stretch, comes across as tired, doubtful, loving, and stubborn in a way that feels relatable. I liked that she isn’t presented as endlessly strong. She is grieving even before the worst losses arrive, and her faith is frayed, which gives her emotional weight and makes her growth feel earned. She carries the novel’s questions about loyalty, survival, and grace without ever seeming too neat, and that roughness is part of what made her believable to me.
What stayed with me most was how grounded the emotional world felt when the book was at its best. The early sections, especially the move from a dying farm into the strange abundance of Sonora, have real texture. I could feel the dust, the heat, the fatigue, and then that almost disorienting shock of green after so much loss. Author Mike Cleveland writes grief in a direct way. He doesn’t try to make it pretty.
I also found the author’s choices interesting because he is doing more than updating a Bible story. He’s translating its moral and spiritual shape into modern concerns like immigration status, farm labor, climate strain, and belonging. That gives the book a wider frame than a simple inspirational romance. Bo is clearly written as more than a love interest. He carries the kinsman-redeemer role very deliberately, and the novel makes its Christ-centered symbolism plain. That will certainly be moving for some readers. For me, the strength of the book is that it understands redemption as something material as well as spiritual. Food, shelter, paperwork, work, land, family, protection. Love here is not abstract. It has weight. It costs something. And that idea gives the story a sturdy, old-fashioned force.
By the end, I came away feeling that this is the kind of novel best read by people who don’t mind wearing their hearts a little closer to the surface. I would recommend The Price of Redeeming Love most to readers who enjoy Christian fiction, redemptive romance, and biblical retellings that stay openly tethered to scripture while still trying to live and breathe as contemporary fiction. Readers who want a story about grief slowly turning toward grace, and who want that story told with conviction, will probably find a lot to value here.
Pages: 395 | ASIN : B0GRCWP23X
Desperate Souls
Desperate Souls follows several lives caught in moments of fear, loss, and fragile hope. The story opens with young Joseph watching his world collapse in a violent attack on his family’s mission, then shifts to Grace, a talented ballet instructor whose body begins to betray her just as her future seems set, and to Nathan, a new father fighting to keep his wife alive. Each thread builds toward a picture of people pushed to the edge of what they can endure and reaching for faith, purpose, or simple survival. The writing leans heavily into emotion, and the pacing keeps the reader on alert as tragedies unfold without warning.
This book pulled me in fast. The emotional punches land hard, and I found myself bracing during several scenes. The details of Joseph’s escape, Grace’s slow unraveling, and Nathan’s desperation created a steady tension that made me keep turning pages. The writing is clear and direct, and it leaves room for the reader to feel the weight of each character’s fear. At times, I wanted a moment to breathe, yet the speed of the story felt true to what these characters were living through. Their worlds were breaking apart.
I also enjoyed how the story handles faith and suffering. It does not drift into heavy explanations, and it avoids preaching. Instead, it shows characters trying to cling to what they believe while everything they trust falls away. Some moments really resonated with me. Grace trying to keep her life together while hiding her symptoms felt painfully real. Nathan stumbling through fear with a baby in his arms made me tense in my seat. I felt frustrated with these characters sometimes, and I felt protective of them too. That mix made the story stick with me.
Desperate Souls will appeal to readers who enjoy character-driven drama with high emotional stakes. It is well-suited for people who like stories about ordinary lives facing sudden upheaval and who appreciate a blend of suspense, faith, and personal struggle. If you want a book that makes you feel something deep and keeps you thinking after you close it, this one will do exactly that.
Pages: 414 | ASIN : B0FHQKDM88
Genuine Faith
With Mercy’s Eye follows a gay actor several months after his husband is killed in an accident, who is left navigating grief, spiritual trauma, and identity while trying to hide his sexuality from his Christian producer. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Some stories take years to develop. Others arrive overnight. With Mercy’s Eyes was a bit of both. I knew years beforehand that God was directing me toward writing a Christian fiction book whose main character was gay. I had no idea how God was going to help me work with that particular combination of factors. All I knew was that He was pointing me toward writing this particular story. That nudge came quietly at first—a few times here and there. But eventually, God’s direction became louder and clearer, letting me know it was time to start writing.
As for the setup specifically, most of it I knew from the outset. I knew the main character’s name, his profession (actor), and where he lived. From the moment it was time to start writing, I also knew what the opening scene would be. There was no wondering or having to build it from the ground up. It was just already there, waiting for me to write it.
What were some of the emotional and moral guidelines you followed when developing your characters?
As a writer, I have one personal baseline. I choose to show characters the same respect I would show a stranger. For me, that means I don’t write scenes involving personal hygiene that wouldn’t be performed in a public setting. It also means I don’t write sexually intimate moments or the lead-up to those moments 99.99% of the time. And it means there are situations where I don’t convey a character’s personal thoughts for more than a few moments at a time.
As a Christian, I look to God and the Bible for guidance on how to handle any given subject, theme, or incident.
This book shows God’s quiet working in our lives and how He can use even the most awful of experiences and circumstances to bring us to Himself. To honor that truth, I chose to portray both Christians and non-Christians in a genuine, true-to-life way. For the Christian characters, that means the faith contained in this book is an everyday faith that works into all aspects of life. It isn’t a faith that only shows up at the dinner table or when something bad happens. It’s always there, and it’s the foundation for the choices and actions of multiple characters in the book. For the non-Christian characters, that means no one is stereotyped or unnecessarily vilified. There is one character who behaves horribly throughout the entire book. That person has reasons for what they do, and there are consequences for their actions. But they aren’t the only character who makes mistakes or hurts others.
While I wrote With Mercy’s Eyes, there were several very personal moments that needed to be explored. Whenever that was the case, I kept the goal of the story in focus throughout that entire scene. I also chose not to elaborate on details that did not serve the overall goal. Many times, that also meant I had to stop mid-paragraph, or even mid-sentence, and hand my words over to God. Because I was not enough for that scene, but God was.
For example, there is a moment in this book where a character loses a child. First, I chose to leave a clear content warning at the start of the book that marks the chapter containing this moment. Second, I chose not to force the reader to remain in that moment for an extended period of time. Third, I chose to focus on elements that directly serve the scene and the book’s goal. There is a brief, but in no way detailed, description of the deceased child and how the parent responds to what they observe. These moments are not for shock value and are never treated as such.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
This is a book about redemption, God’s love, and genuine faith. It’s also about taking a hard look at how we view both others and ourselves. Too many of my fellow Christians hold to an “us vs. them” attitude when it comes to people who live in same-sex relationships. There’s also a tendency to shy away from talking with someone who identifies as LGBTQ. So, With Mercy’s Eyes asks, “What if my fellow Christians could see one of ‘them’ in a different light?”
What is the next book that you’re working on, and when can your fans expect it out?
I have a novella about church hurt that will be published this December as part of a 3-novella collection titled Every Voice Heard. It follows a woman who works at a big-box retail store during the months directly following her departure from the church she’s attended her entire life. When she visits the last church on her list of prospects, she discovers her new employee is the pastor.
To get updates about my novella and the collection as a whole, stay tuned to my Instagram @dtill359 and sign up for my newsletter at dtpowellwrites.com.
Author Links: Goodreads | Instagram | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Six months after struggling actor Lane Harris lost his husband in a tragic accident, he lands a movie role guaranteed to put him on the Hollywood map. But one producer holds the power to shut down his shot at stardom—and she’s a Christian. If she finds out he’s gay, it’s over. Lane is careful not to say too much around her.
When an alcohol-fueled tryst with his co-star ends in humiliation, and his landlord hands him an eviction notice, Lane looks for someone to talk to. He finds a confidant in the Christian producer. After a night of too little sleep and not enough coffee, he lets slip his sexual orientation. Instead of a verbal flogging, the woman recounts recently losing her own husband.
The only Christians Lane knows condemn him upon learning he’s gay. But this one is different. She doesn’t embrace his sexuality, but instead of treating him with disdain, she offers compassion. Christians are supposed to hate people like him. So, why doesn’t she?
– – – – – – –
With Mercy’s Eyes by D. T. Powell is an issue-facing Contemporary novel for adult churched Christians. It addresses homosexuality and same-sex attraction from a Biblical perspective without falling into the trap of the extreme responses we too often see from modern churches. It holds similar views to Jackie Hill Perry, Becket Cook, Rosaria Butterfield, and Christopher Yuan.
Hidden Opportunities for Growth
The Year of My Humiliation follows a brilliant but morally adrift plastic surgeon during what he dubs his “year of humility” as he documents his attempts at personal reform—not out of love or duty, but from a cold, self-imposed challenge to bring his life under control after a scandal that nearly ends his career. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
A friend once left his house in anger and accidentally backed up over his child’s stroller, completely wrecking it. The implication was devastating – what if his child had been in it?
What were some of the emotional and moral guidelines you followed when developing your characters?
When developing Michael, I focused on creating a character who could experience a deeply personal, emotional reckoning without losing authenticity. Morally, I wanted his choices to feel grounded in the realities of human behavior—how we resist change until forced, how pride blinds us to our flaws, and how growth often begins with small, humbling acts.
Michael starts as someone defined by pride and control, but I aimed for his transformation to unfold slowly, in moments that reveal his vulnerability. For instance, making his wife tea wasn’t just an act of humility—it was a subtle yet profound shift in how he saw himself and his relationships.
Emotionally, I focused on Michael’s relationships—especially with the hospital psychiatrist and his estranged son. These interactions highlight the vulnerability of opening oneself to others and the uncertainty of giving love or seeking forgiveness. His choices reflect the gradual, messy process of self-discovery and the risks required to change.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I was deeply interested in the intervention of grace—not as something soft or comforting, but as a force that’s often shocking, even brutal. Grace breaks through our carefully constructed facades and leaves us no choice but to confront the truths we’ve been avoiding. For Michael, this means grappling with the fallout of his mistakes and the painful realities of the relationships he’s damaged.
I wanted to explore how suffering, while deeply mysterious, can act as a crucible for transformation. It’s through Michael’s humiliation—those raw and uncomfortable moments where his pride is stripped away—that the possibility for redemption begins to take shape. Grace doesn’t promise an easy path, but it offers him a chance to rebuild, starting with the messy work of repairing his connection with his estranged son.
These themes—grace, suffering, and redemption—felt essential to me because they mirror the way real change often happens: unexpectedly, painfully, yet profoundly. They remind us of the hidden opportunities for growth buried within even the most difficult experiences.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
My next novel is more a metaphysical one, about a woman’s journey through a life review after a possibly fatal accident (yes, that’s ambiguous for a reason!) Its release isn’t imminent – I want to deliver a compelling and thought-provoking story. To keep in touch, follow me on Facebook and/or sign up for my email list on lilyfieldpress.com.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
Michael, an arrogant pediatric plastic surgeon, believes he controls his own life and his wife Rosie’s, until the discovery of Rosie’s duplicity punctures his self-importance and leads to tragedy. Consumed by remorse, he begins journaling his attempts at reparation, beginning with small, humbling acts – like making his wife’s morning tea.
But proving he’s emotionally fit to wield a scalpel again demands more than trivial self-abasement. Under the scrutiny of a hospital psychiatrist with unorthodox methods, Michael’s carefully constructed justifications crumble, exposing the raw truth he’s desperate to avoid.
Struggling to repair the damage only deepens his humiliation. And the one person who might pave the way to his redemption – his son, “the Jackass” – hasn’t spoken to him in years.
And he has no intention of starting now…
“The Year of My Humiliation” resonates as a tale of psychological and spiritual battles against family, God, and self – delivering a riveting, thought-provoking examination of the human heart and the life-changing power of forgiveness.
